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Warlords Rogue Changes FAQ

This FAQ is intended to answer questions about warlords for rogues who are already familiar with the class in 5.4 and 6.0. If you are looking for additional information check the full Ravenholdt guides (Assassination, Combat, Subtlety) or ask on the forums.

What spec should I level as?
I’d advice against sub for obvious reasons but otherwise it doesn’t really matter. If you’ve been gearing from Siege of Orgrimmar at any point during the previous 14 months(!) you probably have enough gear to make leveling through at least 94 quite easy. If you have one of the Garrosh heirlooms I’d pick your leveling spec based on that, combat if you have the axe, assassination if you have the dagger.

What Spec is best at level 100?
All three specs are very close, within ~5% on single target dps and on sustained cleave. Combat has a number of advantages on higher target and burst AoE due to the simplicity and low ramp up time of Blade Flurry and the the ability to use its major dps cooldowns on AoE as well as single target. SimulationCraft results show subtlety slightly ahead on sustained single target but it is unclear how of this is due to a better optimized SimulationCraft profile. In general the standard recommendation of spec your weapons applies. The damage deltas between specs are small enough that you should be able to play the spec you are more comfortable with without being a major liability to your guild.

What level 100 talent should I use?Assassination: Shadow Reflection
Shadow Reflection synergizes well with vendetta for assassination due to the matching cooldowns. Vendetta and shadow reflection should be macroed together making sure that Shadow Reflection is cast first so the clone casts its own copy of vendetta.Combat: Venom Rush
Venom Rush benefits combat’s energy dependence and synergizes very well with blade flurry helping by mitigating the energy penalty.Subtlety: Shadow Reflection
Shadow Reflection and Death from Above are comparable for subtlety however shadow reflection is substantially easier to use as it can simply be macroed together with shadow dance rather. Death from above by contrast requires careful energy and combo point pooling and takes away control of your character making it harder to use in a raid setting.

How good are the new glyphs?Assassination:Glyph of Disappearanceis ~1% dps increase and probably worth using when at all possible. Glyph of Energy is a <0.1% dps increase, you are probably better off using a utility glyph instead.Combat:Glyph of Energy is a ~2% increase for combat and makes the rotation more forgiving on energy capping. Glyph of Disappearance is an ~1.5% dps increase and probably worth using on most encounters.Subtlety:Glyph of Energy is a ~2.5% dps increase allowing for better energy pooling for shadow dance and find weakness window. Subtlety cannot use Glyph of Disappearance.

Are there any talents or glyphs I should change from 6.0.2?
Probably not. With the removal of shadow blades marked for death is now a small (~1%) dps increase for all three specs on single target, whether this small dps increase is worth a more difficult rotation is a matter of personal preference.

How does my single target rotation change at 100?Assassination: Remember that slice and dice button you’d hit once per fight? Now you don’t even have to do that thanks to Improved Slice and Dice. Empowered Envenom makes proper envenom pooling and timing more important than it was during MoP.Combat: Rupture is no more and revealing strike no longer advances bandit’s guile but there are no major rotational changes for combat.Subtlety:Sinister Calling causes backstab and ambush multistrikes to advance your bleeds, since you can now accumulate multistrike on gear this will make ruptures substantially shorter and require more attentive monitoring.

How does my AoE rotation change at 100?Assassination: For sustained AoE rupture all the things is still the name of the game. For burst AoE you now want to use Crimson Tempest before spamming fan of knives thanks to the Enhanced Crimson Tempest perk.Combat: No major changes, just toggle on the new and improved Blade FlurrySubtlety: Thanks to the Empowered Fan of Knives perk fan of knives should now be used when it will hit more than 1 target. On low target cleave multi-rupture on higher targets use crimson tempest if the adds will live for the full duration.

What stats should I be aiming for?
Standard caveats about static stat weights apply, for accuracy always use a tool that can compute dynamic stat weights but the following should be reasonably accurate.Assassination: Best: Mastery and Crit, Worst: HasteCombat: Best: Haste, Worst: CritSubtlety:Best: Multistrike and Mastery, Worst: Haste

What crafted gear should I be focusing on?
This depends heavily on your guild’s strategy for progression and gearing. A weapon is a popular choice however since it requires an upgrade to be better than a heroic dungeon weapon it isn’t necessarily the best choice. If you guild expects to clear normal and heroic within the first week and/or you have reasonably low weapon competition a crafted weapon is probably not the best choice.
The new darkmoon faire trinket Skull of Waris another commonly discussed option. There are only two trinkets in highmaul and one drops off the last boss in the instance making the darkmoon faire trinket a potentially strong choice. Note however that trinkets have been reduced in potency across the board and are no longer guaranteed to be the best non-weapon item you can get.
The large leatherworking pieces, helm, chest and legs provide the most stats for your crafting materials

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3 thoughts on “Warlords Rogue Changes FAQ”

I’m really wondering if Shadow Reflection would memorize everything, like I turn it on before I burst since it lasts the same 8 seconds that shadow dance and then after time is over it will do exactly the same thing I did..
It seems to good to be real, like us having two bursts.. is that right? I mean, will it use everything, racial skills, burst skills and damage skills?

Exactly what SR does and does not get is complicated. As a general rule the clone will copy the offensive (damage dealing and CC mostly) abilities you use against a target. In the case of shadow dance when you use dance you gain the ability to cast ambush and so your clone will copy those casts of ambush.

Perfect! So basically we’re going to obliterate bosses and everything! \o/
Shadow Dance is 1 min cooldown, but SR is 2, so for every two minutes we have double burst
Honestly, I’ve been playing with tanks and healers since I started playing wow, but rogues are the kind of perfect DPS, we can survive, we can stun, silence, run, damage and heal a little bit. I’m far from being rogue expert but it’s awesome!